Physical abuse amplifies attention to threat and increases anxiety in children.
Abstract
Two experiments using event-related potentials (ERPs) examined the extent to which early traumatic experiences affect children's ability to regulate voluntary and involuntary attention to threat. The authors presented physically abused and nonabused comparison children with conflicting auditory and visual emotion cues, posed by children's mothers or a stranger, to examine the effect of emotion, modality, and poser familiarity on attention regulation. Relative to controls, abused children overattended to task-relevant visual and auditory anger cues. They also attended more to task-irrelevant auditory anger cues. Furthermore, the degree of attention allocated to threat statistically mediated the relationship between physical abuse and child-reported anxiety. These findings indicate that extreme emotional experiences may promote vulnerability for anxiety by influencing the development of attention regulation abilities.
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Children and adults exposed to physical abuse demonstrate increased risk for anxiety disorders and a wide range of physical and behavioral distress.
“Consistent with these animal models, both children (Shackman et al., 2007) and adults (Stein et al., 1996) exposed to physical abuse demonstrate increased risk for anxiety disorders and a wide range of physical and behavioral distress.”
From Developmental psychoneuroendocrine and psychoneuroimmune pathways from childhood adversity to disease (2017) · cites this paper as Shackman et al., 2007
School-aged physically abused children have been shown to be highly sensitive to degraded threat signals, which may reduce constant vigilance in an abusive home.
“School-aged physically abused children, on the other hand, have been shown to be highly sensitive to even very degraded signals of threat, which although potentially maladaptive in some contexts, may provide some relief from constant vigilance in the abusive home (Pollak, Cicchetti, & Klorman, 1998; Pollak & Sinha, 2002; Shackman, Shackman, & Pollak, 2007).”
From The Differential Impacts of Early Physical and Sexual Abuse and Internalizing Problems on Daytime Cortisol Rhythm in School-Aged Children (2010) · cites this paper as Shackman, Shackman, & Pollak, 2007
This bias may be particularly true when viewing one's parent vs a stranger.
“This bias may be particularly true when viewing one's parent vs a stranger (Shackman et al, 2007).”
From Deviations from the expectable environment in early childhood and emerging psychopathology (2015) · cites this paper as Shackman et al, 2007
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References 78 · Cited by 297
- Authors
- Shackman, J. E., Shackman, A. J., & Pollak, S. D.
- Affiliations
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- Venue
- Emotion
- Published
- 2007-11
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 838-852
- ISSN
- 1528-3542 (ISSN-L)
- 1931-1516
- OpenAlex
- W2100895432
- Cited by
- 297
- References
- 78
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 32 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 27 · 2016: 27 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 10
- FWCI
- 7.64
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Emotion (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (MH61285; MH68858, MH073313)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Child Welfare and Adoption
- Keywords
- physical abuse, childhood trauma, threat attention, attentional control, anxiety, emotion cues, anger, event-related potentials, child development
- MeSH terms
- Affect, Anxiety Disorders, Arousal, Attention, Child, Child Abuse, Electroencephalography, Evoked Potentials, Facial Expression, Female, Humans, Male, Voice
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